As far as UTXOs go, that's a paradigm I don't quite understand yet.
I thought I was doing a good thing by buying Sats whenever I got paid, but now some are telling me that is a bad thing. This is worrisome.
Not necessarily a bad thing. Buying satoshis in small amounts and accumulating multiple transactions of small amounts only affects your transaction fee in the future if it is your own non-custodial wallet. But since you bought satoshis on a centralized exchange, it has no effect. The amount of the withdrawal fee in your case depends solely on the exchange and their internal policy. You can't influence that, except you can decide to exchange BTC for some altcoin that has a lower withdrawal fee.
And 'Consolidating Inputs' ...I have no idea what that is.
I guess I truly am a newbie when it comes to BTC *facepalm*
Again, this is related to holding coins in a non-custodial wallet. "Consolidating Inputs" is basically combining multiple small transactions (UTXOs) into a single larger transaction. This can help you save on transaction fees in the future. Bitcoins are like bills and coins in your physical wallet. Imagine you have a wallet full of one dollar bills. Consolidating inputs is like exchanging a hundred one dollar bills for one $100 bill. Just as a $100 bill takes up less space in your wallet, so a Bitcoin transaction with a smaller number of inputs takes up less space on the network, and for that reason the fee for the transaction is lower.